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Stage set for crucial Italian elections

Rome: The polls and radio and TV stations have fallen silent and 50 million Italian voters are mulling over their choices on the eve of a general election to be held on Sunday and Monday.

This is a crucial election whose result, many fear will lead to increased political instability in a country notorious for the short shelf-life of its governments.

This election takes place against the backdrop of rising prices, high unemployment and an extremely slow-paced economy.

Italians are worried, despondent and unhappy and it is believed that this could lead to a high rate of abstention in a country that habitually loves to vote.

While voter surveys have predicted a return to the premiership for a third time by the centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi, his two-digit lead over challenger Walter Veltroni has narrowed at the approach of the vote on Sunday and Monday.

Pitching to the undecided who make up about one-third of Italy’s 50 million-strong electorate, Mr. Berlusconi made an 11th-hour pledge to gradually eliminate the vehicle registration tax, similar to a vow he made at the end of the 2006 campaign to do away with a property tax.

In a series of television appearances broadcast by the three network he owns, Mr. Berlusconi accused Mr. Veltroni of being a compulsive liar — “forty three times in a single interview.”

Hitting back, Mr. Veltroni said voting Mr. Berlusconi back to power was like bringing in “the same old losing football team.”

Mr. Veltroni, the former Mayor of Rome, urged voters to “turn the page” on the older generation represented by Mr. Berlusconi, who for his part has cast Mr. Veltroni as a communist relic At 52, Mr. Veltroni is already an old hand in Italian politics, which he entered as a communist youth activist in the 1970s, while Mr. Berlusconi, now 71, burst into the political arena in 1993. Whoever wins on Monday will have to contend with a stalling economy, a populace disaffected with the political class and all-too-familiar legislative gridlock.

The fear is that a narrow win — or even a loss — for Mr. Berlusconi’s People of Freedom (PDL) party in the Senate would guarantee the instability that ended the 20-month-old centre-left government of Romano Prodi in January.

Mr. Berlusconi urged supporters of smaller formations — there are a total of 32 candidates for Premier — to cast a “useful vote” for his party to give him the advantage he would need in the Senate. The victor, while saddled with a moribund economy, will also have to act quickly to resolve a waste disposal crisis in the southern Naples region and clinch an elusive deal with Air France-KLM to take over the failing Alitalia airline or, likely, oversee its liquidation.

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